http://lindaraftree.blogspot.com/2010/01/children-in-emergencies-applying-what.htmlIn early 2005, following the Tsunami, I collaborated with a cross-section of people at the organization where I work to put together a summary of lessons learned and some short guidelines for working with children and communities in emergencies.
All of us had been directly responsible for working with communities, staff, local and national governments, international and national NGOs, children, youth, schools and teachers, or some combination of the above, in the countries where we lived and worked. We discussed preparedness as well as relief and recovery phases. We talked about how child focused community development organizations, like the one where we worked, should look at children's survival, development, participation and protection in a disaster situation and we created some internal guidelines.
Some of the most important things that stayed with me from the weeks we spent talking with each other, with peer organizations, and with our colleagues who were dealing with the 2004 Tsunami are related to the importance of child participation and protection during emergencies. These recommendations can be applied now to the crisis in Haiti.
· Don’t assume children or their families can’t do anything for themselves. Local coping mechanisms are often overlooked and underestimated by central governments or aid organizations, creating unnecessary dependency. Participating and taking control of their situation can actually help people return to normal sooner. I clearly remember an example of an IDP camp where all the services (food, water) were at first centrally coordinated by the municipal government. A manager from our organization was able to convince the government to engage camp ‘residents’ and organize children and youth into smaller groups who handled particular responsibilities. Suddenly the trash in the camp was picked up and time spent in the food line went from 2 hours to 20 minutes, tempers lowered and people relaxed a bit and got on with things. The Children and Participation: Research, Monitoring and Evaluation with Children and Young People by Save the Children is a general guide that can help staff think through and orient participation of children and young people in emergencies. Child-Oriented Participatory Risk Assessment and Planning (COPRAP): A Toolkit developed by the Center for Disaster Preparedness (CDP) in the Philippines is another excellent resource. Both were adapted and used by Plan during the conflict in Timor Leste, for example.
· Child protection is critical during an emergency and after. During a disaster the typical social patterns and groupings that protect children may be challenged or broken. Children can be further harmed, abused and exploited by those who take advantage of the chaos. Unaccompanied children can be preyed on if mechanisms are not established quickly. Personal information about children is often shared or published widely in the interest of helping find parents or relatives or find missing persons, yet it can also help unscrupulous people to identify unaccompanied children and prey on them, especially now when published on the internet. Birth registration and restoration of lost identity and other civil registration documents are critical to halt trafficking, as is close coordination among organizations, governments, communities and local agencies/staff. Community members and the affected population can play a strong role in protecting their children, as can older children themselves. The Interagency Guiding Principles on Unaccompanied and Separated Children, put together by the International Committee of the Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children UK, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and World Vision, gives an excellent overview of protection. Further resources are available at Better Care Network’s website which has materials on separated children in emergencies, how to prevent separation through good relief and response efforts, registration, documentation and tracing, emergency care arrangements, verification and family reunification.
· Unaccompanied children should not be given up for foreign adoption during the emergency phase. Experience in many past emergencies and conflicts has shown that this is just not the way to go. In the emergency phase there is no way to ascertain which children are orphans with no other family at all, versus children who might be orphaned but have family somewhere who could take them in. Taking children out of the country to feed them without a long-term, sustainable plan for them can end up being more complex than finding a way to feed and care for them in country. Supporting removal of children from their own country during a time of upheaval could also engender a negative reaction among the affected population, who may come to see every external face that comes into the community or camp as someone coming to steal their children. Interim and emergency care should be consistent with the long-term goal of family reunification. More background on this can be found at the International Foster Care Association’s website.
· Participation and protection go hand in hand. The greater the amount of knowledge and ownership that children, youth and their families and communities have, the safer they will be and the sooner they will recover. When the affected people have more input in the relief, recovery and reconstruction, efforts are more successful. This means linking and coordinating with existing community organizations and structures, local government mechanisms, local non-governmental organizations. Though it may appear that everything is wiped out in a major disaster, leaders will emerge and regroup. Plan's publication “After the Cameras have Gone: Children in Disasters” offers some examples and insights on protection and participation in disaster situations.
· The media will undoubtedly look for the ‘best’ story in the interest of raising the most funds possible for the emergency. In media-speak, unfortunately, that often means the hardest hitting story, the most emotional story, and some journalists/media folks will go extremely far to get it. However, journalists and agencies bringing journalists to affected communities should obviously not further harm children or take advantage of affected persons in their drive to get the best story. Journalists should not ask children to relive traumatic experiences or to make them tell stories that upset them just to get a shot of a child crying. The golden rule applies - how would you like it if that were you or your child? Children or other community members may be too polite or unsure of whether they can say ‘no’ to a journalist, especially if that journalist is foreign or comes with an aid agency or entity that is linked with emergency aid. Those working regularly with children and their families should ensure them that they can refuse to talk, they can halt an interview, or not have their picture taken. Local staff managing media visits should feel empowered to intervene in these cases. UNICEF’s “Child Rights and the Media” Guidelines for Journalists and Media Professionals, published by the International Federation of Journalists, gives a background and guide for ethical reporting on children in general. These guidelines include things like striving for sensitivity when reporting on issues involving children and avoiding use of stereotypes and sensational presentation to promote journalistic material involving children, and they should apply in emergency situations as well.
Letter of the day: Haiti suffers, and Robertson sees the hand of Satan | StarTribune.comIn a small paragraph on page A10 of the Jan. 14 Star Tribune is a report about the remarks made by evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson. Obviously, Robertson believes in creation, not evolution, or he would understand that earthquakes predate the human concept of a curse. Also, Poseidon was considered in mythology to be the god of earthquakes and the sea; therefore, it stands to reason that perhaps he, too, was offended? I hope that Robertson will make a public apology to the people of Haiti for making such a ridiculous statement.
H. BETH LABRECHE, FRIDLEY
•••
Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll. You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.
Best, Satan
Haiti quake horror as over 100,000 feared dead | News.com.auHAITI'S Prime Minister warned the death toll may top 100,000 in a calamitous earthquake which left streets strewn with corpses and thousands missing in a scene of utter carnage.
Hospitals collapsed, destroyed schools were full of dead people and the cries of trapped victims escaped from crushed buildings in the centre of the capital Port-au-Prince, which an Agence France-Presse correspondent said was "mostly destroyed".
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told CNN the final death toll from the 7.0 quake could be "well over 100,000", as an international aid effort geared up in a race against time to pull survivors from the ruins.
16 UN staffers are confirmed dead and another 56 injured in the earthquake that flattened the UN mission's main headquarters in Port-au-Prince, a top UN official said. The number of UN personnel unaccounted for "is in the range of 150".
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Citing preliminary figures, Susana Malcorra, head of the UN department of Field Support, said the world body could confirm 14 fatalities among personnel of the UN mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and 56 others injured.
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon has delivered a strong message of support for the victims of the Haiti earthquake.
"We are with you," he declared. "We are working quickly - as fast as humanly possible."
He added: "Our response must be well coordinated. People need food, water and shelter. We need to find people trapped in the rubble."
He said US$10 million had been initially put forward for the relief effort.
There also remains concerns for a small number of missing Australians.
Mr Bellerive said he hoped to final death toll does not meet current estimates of more than 100,000.
"I hope that is not true, because I hope the people had the time to get out. Because we have so much people on the streets right now, we don't know exactly where they were living," Mr Bellerive said.
"But so many, so many buildings, so many neighbourhoods totally destroyed, and some neighbourhoods we don't even see people, so I don't know where those people are."
President Rene Preval painted a scene of complete destruction in his impoverished Caribbean nation after the quake struck yesterday.
"Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed," he told the Miami Herald.
"There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them," he said, as experts spoke of the worst quake to hit the disaster-prone nation in more than a century.
With hospitals also having crumbled in the fury of the quake, medical services were struggling to cope with the flow of wounded.
There are "tens of thousands of victims and considerable damage", Haiti's ambassador to the Organisation of American States Duly Brutus said.
A huge aid mission has now been launched.
"The most urgent need is to help the thousands of people who are still alive and trapped in the ruins," he added, saying the last quake of such magnitude to strike Haiti was in 1842.
Preval's wife, First Lady Elisabeth Preval, told the US Daily she had seen bodies in the streets of Port-au-Prince and had heard the cries of victims still trapped in the rubble of the parliament building.
"I'm stepping over dead bodies. A lot of people are buried under buildings. The general hospital has collapsed. We need support. We need help. We need engineers," she said.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the capital, with its population of two million people had borne the brunt of the quake which struck at 4.53pm local time, saying vast areas had been destroyed.
While much of the rest of the impoverished Caribbean nation appeared largely unaffected, Mr Ban gave a grim assessment of the devastation in Port-au-Prince, saying the city's few basic services had collapsed.
"There is no doubt that we are facing a major humanitarian emergency and that a major relief effort will be required," he told a press conference in the United Nations, as he prepared to visit Haiti as soon as possible.
The temblor toppled the cupola on the gleaming white presidential palace, a major hotel where 200 tourists were missing and the headquarters of the UN mission in Haiti where up to 250 personnel were unaccounted for.
Jordan reported that three of its peacekeepers were killed and 21 injured. Brazil said 11 of its peacekeepers died, while eight Chinese soldiers were buried in rubble and 10 were missing, state media said.
An Argentine-staffed hospital was the only one left operating in the city and was struggling to cope with huge numbers of injured, its director told Argentine television.
"The situation is really critical because we cannot cope with this many dead and injured," Daniel Desimone told Todo Noticias.
A major international relief operation was underway with the United States, France, Britain and Canada all promising help.
US President Barack Obama vowed a swift and aggressive effort to save lives and said search and rescue teams would arrive within hours after a "heartwrenching" earthquake.
"This tragedy seems especially cruel and incomprehensible," he said.
The US military has mobilised ships, aircraft and expert teams.
Planeloads of rescue teams and relief supplies were quickly dispatched from nations including Britain, Canada, Russia, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Russia.
As well as virtually destroying Port-Au-Prince, the earthquake also caused widespread destruction in the resort town of Jacmel, south of the capital, a witness said, saying he saw an entire mountain almost collapsed.
Two hundred foreigners were missing at the Hotel Montana, French Secretary of State for Cooperation Alain Joyandet said.
Among the dead was the archbishop of Port-au-Prince Monsignor Serge Miot the Missionary International Service News Agency (MISNA) reported in Rome.
